1. Technical Field
The invention is related to a booting method and electronic apparatus therefor, and more particularly to a booting method for low temperature environment and electronic apparatus therefor.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, the electronic components have limitations of the lowest operating temperature. When electronic apparatus is disposed in a low temperature environment, the situation causes low performance of the electronic apparatus or the electronic apparatus to be unable to work normally even with adequate power supply. Many conventional methods are developed to improve above mentioned situation. For example, a hard drive heating unit is disposed on the hard drive of a notebook computer. When the notebook computer is unable to boot up after receiving a booting signal or the notebook computer crashes because of the low temperature, the notebook computer will heat up the hard drive through the hard drive heating unit before or during the boot process and also extend the power-on time of the motherboard to increase the temperature of some components on the motherboard. When the internal temperature of the notebook computer reaches an allowable working temperature, the notebook computer performs the boot process.
However, manufacturers may not install a temperature detection unit to measure the internal temperature of the notebook computer and hard drive temperature.
Instead, the hard drive is heated and the motherboard is powered for a fixed time when the notebook computer abnormally shutdowns or is unable to start. However, manufacturers using methods mentioned above do not take the external AC adapter of the notebook computer into consideration.
Under the low temperature environment, the AC adaptor experiences the same low performance or dropping of the power output issues. The aforementioned methods are used to increase the temperature of the notebook computer to an allowable booting temperature. However, the AC adapter may not work normally because it is still in a low temperature condition. Under such situation, the AC adapter is unable to bear the required outputs of the notebook computer during the boot process and that leads to the power failure of the AC adapter. The power failure of the AC adaptor causes abnormal shutdown of the notebook computer during the boot process. In other words, the reasons that cause the notebook computer to be unable to boot normally include the temperature limitation of the AC adaptor. But the conventional methods are only to heat the notebook computer. In this way, besides wasting energy, it also increases the unnecessary waiting time.
Notebook computers may meet the specifications for harsh environment, such as specifications for military use, other than general commercial specifications. However, the notebooks may still operate with the AC adaptors only for general commercial specification. Under certain emergency situation, it still takes the user a lot of unnecessary time to wait for the boot process of the notebook computer with specifications of harsh environment because the notebook computer works with the AC adaptor with general commercial specification. Also, it is not practical to dispose a heater on the AC adaptor. Therefore, how to stabilize the power supply of the AC adaptor with an effective time under low temperature environment so that the electronic apparatus, such as notebook computers, can boot up and operate normally is an issue that is necessary to be solved in the present field.